After the wildfires— lessons on being prepared

It’s been almost a year since the devastating wildfires in Halifax and Shelburne Counties.  The Barrington Lake fire — the largest wildfire in recorded history of the province and the Tantallon fire — one of the most expensive.
 
Kara McCurdy recently left her role as a Fire Prevention officer with Natural Resources and Renewables for a similar role with Halifax Fire and Emergency Services. She was also presented with the Lynn Orstad Award for preventing wildfire and advancing community resiliency. 
As she moves into her new role with HRFE, McCurdy discusses the FireSmart program and some of the lessons learned on protecting properties from wildfire risk.
 
May 5th to 11th is Emergency Preparedness Week.  For more information visit Halifax.ca/EMO. 

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
It says local resident of Halifax,Kara McCarney, but it doesn't really address
who it is and what you do. Yeah, well I actually live in
Stuiak. That's okay, But Iam the new wildfire mitigation I keep messing
up while fire mitigation program manager forHalifax. And what a time to come
into this job given what we sawone year ago. Yeah, I mean

(00:27):
the importance of it is huge,you know, with the fires last season
and the after action reviews conducted bothby Natural Resources and Halifax, you know,
identified a lot of gaps in theprograms, and that's why Halifax brought
me on, right. Yeah,and I was told that you were given

(00:48):
the honor of the lynn or StatAward. Tell me a little bit about
what happened. How did that happen? Well, it's a funny story actually.
So my friend Laura, she's myher part in Alberta, or was
when I was with Natural Resources beforeher and one of the managers from New
Brunswick wanted to nominate me because Iwas a part of a national committee.

(01:10):
Right, so they they thought aboutit and they never really went through with
it fully before another person nominated me, which was the one of the leads
for Fire Smart Canada. So Iwas really nominated by by two folks to
get the award, and yeah soand ended up Laura actually gave me the

(01:30):
award at the event, but shedidn't tell me that she was also getting
the award because she didn't want tosteal the glory from me, I guess.
But what a great honor though,to get an award with one of
my close friends, you know,from Alberta. So let's let's get the
award here in the shot here,so the base has my name and stuff

(01:52):
there yet and so a little bitabout what the award wreck. So what
is it honoring you for. It'swomen in wildfire resiliency. So Lynn Orstad
was an employee to b c EChilliwack PC and throughout her her career she

(02:15):
had advocated for wildfire in many differentfacets of emergency management in thirty years and
when they when she passed away,they decided that it would be nice to
have an award in memory of Lynn. It's it is. It's a striking
award. Where do you keep it? Yeah, well, thanks for stepping

(02:38):
outside of the office to come dothis today. It's it's really a testament
to a dedication to teach and toshow and to lead by example. Clearly
they felt that you were worthy.Yeah, so, I mean last season's
wildfires was unpresidented across Canada for sure, and you know the increase in the

(03:00):
amount of wildfires we've been having nationally, it's important to really push that message
out to public into residence. Andit's great that we have agencies like Cooperators
Insurance and fire Smart Canada and evenwhile I needs to Insurance that are pushing
funding in educational materials for Canada Canadiansto use in general. And again wanted

(03:23):
to recognize it's twenty twenty four LynnOrsted Award recipient Karen McCurdy. So congratulations
for that. That's a pretty highhonor. So how do you top that?
You don't I'm not one for talkingabout getting awards or anything like that
because I usually don't, you know, talk about myself or push forward any

(03:46):
any kind of things that I do. But it felt pretty good. And
I even had the trip to BCall expenses paid. But I was also
a keynote speaker at the events,so it was kind of twofold, I
guess special. Yeah, well,congratulations on that if you don't mind,
we'll hand us back to Brandon.And since the timing couldn't be any better,

(04:06):
First of all, how are youfeeling about all the media. It's
been a little busy this. I'mtrying to get my feet underneath me in
the position, and of course it'sin the height of fire season right,
so it's been it's been a littlehairy trying to get everything completed and do
interviews and things like that, butwe'll manage. We're standing here in front

(04:28):
of the Fire Prevention Office for HalifaxRegional Fire and Emergency Services. Coincidentally,
Emergency Preparedness Week is just ahead ofus. So what does that week mean
for you? What are you goingto be doing? So Saturday, I'm
heading to Westwood Hills up in Tantallanwhere the fire started last season, and
they're having both a presentation and ademo. We're going to look at a
house that's up in the community,actually right next to the burn, and

(04:51):
we're going to do some demonstrations onhow to cut trees and prune trees,
and we're going to do a riskassessment of her property when we're there,
and then continuing on this next week, is several presentations and meetings with community
members all through Tantalin on wildfire preparedness. So we're going back to Westwood on

(05:14):
the ninth, then we're in HighlandPark. There's an event at fall River
also on Saturday, so a lotof the firefighters are really pushing the message
and trying to get it out there. We're likely going to see and hear
a lot about fire prevention, emergencypreparedness. You touched on something very briefly.
You mentioned fire Safe Canada and youtalked about how to secure your property

(05:34):
and that's probably more top of mindnow than it's ever been for obvious reasons,
as you point out the two mostdevastating wildfires in the history of Nova
Scotia. And where should people goif they want to learn more about fire
safe, Well, if they wantto learn about the fire Smart program,
the easiest smart, the easiest betis to there's two things they can do.

(05:56):
Individual residents can apply or go onlineto Halifax. Just put in fire
Smart and we'll be able to signup their property and their home to get
assessed for wildfire risk. And thisgives them a thirteen page report on what
they can do to reduce risk.It's free, a firefighter will come oute
to their property and deliver it forthem. But on top of that,

(06:17):
if communities want to get more involvedin kind of risk assessments for the entire
community and planning and doing some collaborativeefforts, they can go to the fire
smart Canada dot ca page and signup for a risk assessment there for a
community. What we saw in twentytwenty three with the wildfires, I think

(06:40):
for a lot of people, thevery act of being told no, you
need to go speaks to emergency preparedness. People think it's never going to happen.
And here it was a Sunday afternoonand all of a sudden, the
words started to go out, Whatis your role? How can we help
people understand what it is they needto know about being ready and being prepared.

(07:02):
I guess the biggest thing is I'mtrying to push to folks that it's
not just about wallfire. It's aboutall natural disasters. And you know,
as residents, we spend a lotof time preparing our property for flooding and
hurricanes and snowstorms, but we oftenjust think that the fire services is going

(07:23):
to pop in and put out awallfire as quick as possible, right,
But it's the exact same thing.So residents need to prepare their property just
as much. And it's not justthe residence responsibility certainly, like the agencies
and the first responders are all lookingat, you know, what they can
do on their part to make thingsmore effective, you know, even if

(07:43):
it is evacuations or access egress,water supply, preparedness response, whatever.
So working together as a group ismore important. I think it's not something
that most people are comfortable with,which is having the mindset of I need
to go, what do I haveto have? That's not the time to
think about it. No, No, So we want folks to visit the

(08:07):
Emergency Measures page and they have aseventy two hour preparedness kit that they can
put together. There's a lot ofplanning and evacuation stuff there, like a
checklist of what they can do tokind of get ready in case they have
to go because it may not bea wall fire next time. It might
be a snowstorm or a hurricane orsomething. And I guess. On a

(08:28):
final note, Halifax's Regional Fire andEmergency Services Emergency Preparedness lessons learned from last
year. How has the I knowyou're new in the job, but how
has the conversation been around this comingwildfire season? Are we ready? Are
we prepared? Have we learned thelessons? How do you feel about that?
I think we're in good shape.You know, we have all the

(08:50):
fire equipment is out, We're inenhancing training efforts with the fire departments.
But on top of that, we'relooking at equipment and personal protective equipment and
then getting more folks trained in thefire smart and the mitigation stuff so that
they can help us in the communities. There's lots of new toys coming that

(09:11):
we've you know, we've got newfire trucks and detection and even a structure
protection unit. So Nova Scotia hasnever had a large fire like this where
we've had losses like last season Twitterand thirty nine homes, So we've decided
that, you know, maybe weshould look at the structure protection side of
things and having sprinkler kits and that. Yeah, for for a lot of

(09:35):
volunteers, that is part of training, it's not part of reality, so
it is in this case real,Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I
just want to commend you for KarenMcCurdy the recognition for the outstanding work preventing
wildfire and advancing community resilience with theLinn or STAT Award for twenty twenty four. Congratulation